


Happy Birthday

by Shinyunderwater



Series: Outrun the Sunset [4]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: 1966 world cup, Gen, Swinging Sixties, pub food
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-10-29 23:27:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17817551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shinyunderwater/pseuds/Shinyunderwater
Summary: The Doctor decides to keep a promise, and in the process of doing so break one. They say you can never go home again, but the Doctor is a time traveller. She takes the team to 1966 to see England's first world cup win, but what should be an innocent outing turns into something much darker.





	1. Part One

Graham laughed with delight as the four of them piled into the TARDIS. “Now THAT is what I call music,” he declared.

 

“It was alright,” Ryan said in an attempt at a dismissive tone, but Graham could see the smile fighting its way onto his face.

 

“That was better than just alright and you know it,” Graham protested while the Doctor fiddled with the controls wearing a visible smirk. “That was real music, none of that fake stuff you make on a computer,” he said.

 

“We're probably the only people who will ever remember what it sounded like though,” Yaz said with a laugh. “That whole place smelled like cannabis, even though the concert was outside! What's the point of going through all the trouble to travel here and see one of your favorite bands if you're just going to get high.”

 

“Alright PC Khan,” Ryan joked.

 

“I'm only saying.”

 

“It's part of the experience,” Ryan teased.

 

“Oi!” Graham spoke up. “You better not even think about ever trying any of that stuff or your Nan will-” Graham stopped in mid sentence as he remembered. It amazed him that he could still forget. He wondered if that would ever stop. He looked away so Ryan wouldn't see his distress, but it was too late.

 

Ryan walked up to Graham and put a comforting hand on his arm. “I bet she would have loved this. Nan always liked music.”

 

“Yeah,” Graham agreed, thinking about the way they had danced to slow jazz after their third date. “She'd have thought it grand.”

 

“Are you alright Graham,” the Doctor asked.

 

Graham tried to offer her a smile. The Doctor had seemed for the most part back to her old self over the last few weeks, which was to say that she hadn't kidnapped anybody or threatened to launch any passing spaceships into a sun. Graham admitted to himself that he'd given her a somewhat low bar to success, but all the same he'd enjoyed their recent (more or less) stress free trips.

 

“Do you want to stop off at home for a few days maybe,” Yaz asked. “I should work a few shifts, before I forget how to put my uniform on. You could…” She trailed off.

 

Graham knew what she meant. He could visit the cemetery. He could lie in the bed he'd shared with Grace and think of her. It was hard to talk about those sorts of things out loud though. “Might be a good idea,” he said.

 

“Wait,” the Doctor blurted. “They're one more thing we should do before you go home.”

 

“It can't wait a week,” Ryan asked. “You can just hop ahead and pick us up after all.”

 

“I think you'll like this, trust me.”

 

Ryan looked at Graham. Graham shrugged in response. He was sort of curious to see what was so exciting it made the Doctor not want to wait the few minutes it would take her to drop them off and jump ahead. “Show us.”

 

The Doctor grinned. “Great.” She began dancing around the controls.

 

“What are we going to see,” Yaz asked.

 

“It'll be a surprise, for all of us.”

 

“Even you,” Ryan asked. “Are you just putting her on random again? Because the last time you did that it wasn't our best adventure.”

 

“Nope!” The Doctor pulled the lever.

 

Graham gave the Doctor a puzzled look as she ran to the doors. “Ta da!” She threw the doors open with great fanfare. “London!”

 

“London,” Yaz asked, sounding surprised.

 

“Doc I could drive to London, and I have many times. What's so great about London?”

 

“Because this isn't just London. Take a look around Graham. All of you, tell me when you see something interesting,” she instructed.

 

The three of them followed the Doctor out of the TARDIS. “Yeah, it just looks like regular old London Doc,” Graham said. “Sorry.”

 

“Hold on,” said Yaz. “That's odd.” She pointed at a nearby bus stop. As a woman walked past the rainshield a hologram jumped out of the advertisement on it and started trying to sell her something. She rolled her eyes and kept walking. “When did those get installed?”

 

“Ugh, that's so annoying,” Ryan said.

 

“Welcome to the year 2027!”

 

“So we jumped ahead eight years from where we normally are,” Yaz asked. “Why?”

 

Graham felt a sense of deep unease begin to overtake him. “I know why. It's somebody's birthday today, isn't it,” he asked, annoyed.

 

The Doctor put on an impish grin. “Is it?”

 

“Doctor,” Yaz admonished. Graham was grateful to her for not letting the responsibility of lecturing the Doctor fall on his shoulders alone. “You promised you were going to go back and apologize to your friend.”

 

“And I will,” she said with a flippant wave.

 

“Don't you think you should do that before you take the kid on another trip,” Graham asked as they followed the Doctor down the busy streets. He looked up at Big Ben.

 

“I will.” She smiled at something she saw in a shop window.

 

“But you haven't yet,” Ryan said.

 

“But I will. I'll pop back to two or three days right after the incident and give a heartfelt apology to Martha and Mickey,” she said.

 

Graham didn't have the level of understanding that the Doctor did concerning time travel, so he couldn't find the right words to articulate his argument. None the less he knew that what they were doing was wrong even if he couldn't conceptualize how all the mechanics worked. “Doc, I don't like this.”

 

“What do you think Tally looks like now?”

 

“So you're ignoring me,” Graham asked.

 

“Are you sure she'll even show up,” Yaz asked. “That promise you made her was years ago when she was a kid. She might not even remember. She might not want to go.”

 

“There she is,” Ryan said. Graham followed his grandson's finger to a teenage girl sitting right outside Big Ben flipping through a book with Chinese characters on the cover. She had a big puffy afro and a leather jacket that reminded Graham of his own misspent youth.

 

“Oi! Tally,” the Doctor shouted as she began to run over. The girl's head snapped up and she blanched. She stared at them in an expression of shock and amazement.

 

“Wha-” She scrambled to her feet. “What are you doing here?!” She looked from the Doctor to Yaz to Ryan to Graham. For some reason he seemed to surprise her most. “How are you here?” She shook her head. “What…”

 

The Doctor frowned. “I told you I would come on your seventeenth birthday. This is where we agreed to meet up. It's May eighteenth.”

 

“And you're here,” Ryan pointed out. “Why’d you show up if you didn't think we would?”

 

Tally stared at him as though she couldn't understand what language he was speaking, which was impossible with the TARDIS translation circuits and also because they were speaking the same language. All of a sudden a light sparked in her eyes and her expression went from dumbfounded to delighted. She started to laugh. “Oh! This is before all that! I get it. You jumped ahead.”

 

Yaz looked at Graham with a bewilderment that rivaled the one Tally had just recovered from, but he couldn't do more than shrug in response. He was baffled as well.

 

“Are you alright Tally,” Ryan asked. He looked to the Doctor for answers, but when Graham followed his gaze he saw that she looked nervous. That was never a good sign.

 

“Did something happen,” the Doctor asked.

 

“I guess it hasn't yet,” Tally said as she shoved her book into her bag. “So how long ago was Egypt for you,” she asked them.

 

“A month or so I think,” Ryan said. “Hard to tell sometimes. But not eight years for sure.”

 

Tally slapped her hands against each other and rubbed them together in excitement like she was trying to build friction. “So this is my birthday present then? Bang on!”

 

“Anywhere in particular you want to go,” the Doctor asked. All previous signs of anxiety or doubt had vanished, but somehow that deepened Graham's own unease instead of soothing it. “Wanna go meet Shakespeare?”

 

“Do I wanna meet the guy who wrote a bunch of lusty poems about my mum? Hard pass.”

 

“Did that really happen,” Yaz asked.

 

“Yeah, he was quite taken with her,” the Doctor said with a nostalgic smile.

 

“Tally,” Graham said. “Why were you so surprised to see us? What happened?”

 

Tally ignored him. “1966, July 30, Wembley stadium, that's where we're going.”

 

“England's first World Cup win!” Ryan grinned at her. “Nice. That'll be something to see.”

 

“You forgot who Rosa Parks-” Yaz began.

 

“I didn't forget. I got a bit confused is all.”

 

“But you remember the exact day we first won the World Cup,” Yaz finished with a shake of her head. “Priorities Ryan?”

 

“Right then, let's go.” Tally started off in the direction they had come from as if she knew where she was heading. “This is going to be the best birthday ever!” She looked up at the sky and did a 360° turn. “This is wicked!”

 

The Doctor, Yaz and Ryan started to follow Tally, but Graham put a hand on the Doctor's shoulder and she paused. “Everything alright Graham,” she asked with a warm smile.

 

“What was all that about something happening that hasn't happened yet?”

 

The Doctor shrugged. “We'll find out.”

 

“That's it?” Graham didn't find that answer satisfying in the least. “What if it was something bad? It sort of sounds like it might have been something bad.”

 

“All the more reason to have fun now. Come on Graham! Futball! What sort of self-respecting Englishman doesn't love it?”

 

The Doctor took off running after the rest of the group, leaving Graham to stew in his frustration. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against a bill board. “Hi!”

 

“Gahhhh!” Graham jolted away from a hologram of a woman dressed in a colorful miniscule bikini holding a beer.

 

“Would you like buy happiness in a bottle? Do you want to be the sexiest man in every pub,” she asked in a sultry voice as she twisted her body into unnecessary and unnatural positions.

 

“No.” Graham circumvented the hologram to follow the Doctor. By the looks of it his near future didn't seem too appealing. Maybe the Doctor was right and the thing to do was just savor the moment. He considered that he might not even have another eight years in him and he picked up his pace. “Wait up!”

 

The Doctor shook her head in amusement when he caught up to her. “It's not as though we'd ever take off without you,” she told him.

 

He smiled at her. The Doctor had gotten on his nerves a few times during some of their tense adventures, but even still she was his friend, and he felt privileged to be friends with such an amazing person. He just wished she would pause and consider the consequences sometimes. “I don't think I like this decade Doc. Looking forward to the sixties.”

 

The Doctor flashed a grin as they all made their way into the TARDIS. Tally ran from column to column, touching things and gazing at them with adoration. “It's even better than I remember! Oh I love it.”

 

The Doctor beamed as she ran up to the controls and started to input the coordinates for their destination. “Next stop, the swinging sixties! Good music and great fashion.”

 

Graham thought about the outfits his mum had been wearing in some of his old childhood photos and questioned the Doctor's assertion. She flipped the switch and they were on their way. A second later and fifty-three years earlier they came to a stop and the Doctor bounded through the doors into the warm summer street. The rest of the gang followed after and Graham raised his brow as he examined the view. Great fashion was not a phrase he would associate with what he was seeing. A woman ran over to them wearing an aggressive orange dress and white boots with outrageous heels while carrying a stack of fliers. “Join the fight for nuclear disarmament,” she somehow asked and commanded at the same time as she held out a flier. “Do your part to prevent world war three.” She smiled with lips of steel.

 

The Doctor took the flier. “Thank you,” she said with an encouraging grin. “And thank you for the work you're doing. People like you are the future,” she encouraged her.

 

The woman seemed surprised by the Doctor's praise, but she went from surprised to ellated in record time. “It's good of you to say so. Have a great day.”

 

Tally spoke up once the woman was out of earshot. “But it doesn't work. What's the point of encouraging her? They fail. That's history.”

 

The Doctor turned to face Tally. “They didn't fail Tallulah. They built the foundation that the next generation builds upon, and the next, and the next until one day they do succeed.”

 

Tallulah appeared contemplative. She looked towards where the woman had almost disappeared into the crowd and started to run after her. “Excuse me Miss! May I have a flier as well?” Tally retrieved her flier and then returned to them with a smile on her face.

 

“That was nice,” Yaz said.

 

“Yep, souvenir.” Tally pulled her book out of her bag and placed the flier inside to prevent it getting wrinkled. “Let's go watch West Germany get destroyed!” She took off running again. Graham smiled and shook his head at her. It was weird thinking about how she had been just eight a month ago, and over a hundred a month before that. Life with the Doctor could get confusing. But there was nothing confusing about what they were about to do. They would watch an exciting game and then go home. He was confident not much could go wrong with that.


	2. Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for yet another massive delay between updates. But! Here's chapter two and I hope you enjoy it. Fingers crossed the next six chapters don't give me as much trouble.

Yaz was looking up at the sky. “What time does the game start,” she asked. “Looks to be about midday right now.” The Doctor watched her grin at the ridiculous cars rolling down the street. To someone from 2019 the environment must seem quaint, but to the Doctor everything looked familiar.

 

“The game doesn't start until three,” Tally informed them. “And it's going to run over into extra time, so maybe we should get lunch before we head over,” she recommended.

 

“I like that idea,” Graham said. The Doctor smiled at the pair and their perpetual hunger.

 

“Ooh look, a pub!” Tally pointed out a small cheerful building overflowing with people.

 

“I could go for some chips,” the Doctor said.

 

The five of them headed towards the scent of grease and fermented grain. “What sort of food was served in the sixties,” Ryan asked. “Or is it just the usual pub fare?”

 

They entered the overcrowded building to hear Ray Davies singing for them through the radio. “And I can't sail my yacht. She's taken everything I've got. All I've got's this sunny afternoon,” he crooned as they walked across the sticky floor. The Doctor felt the summer heat, bolstered by too many bodies squished together and overworking ovens without proper ventilation, pressing down on them.

 

“I don't think we'll be able to find a table in all this,” Graham said.

 

“Nothing wrong with a bit of a crowd. Means there's something happening worth experiencing,” the Doctor replied.

 

“Well said miss! Well said!” A tan man with a bushy black beard and warm brown eyes approached the group. “Can't you feel it in the air?” The man grinned.

 

“Feel what,” Yaz asked.

 

“The joy, the sheer exhilaration. All these people gathered together in love and acceptance, building onto each other's good mood. It's enough to put a man to weeping.”

 

“That's beautiful,” the Doctor said with complete sincerity.

 

“I am Jozsef,” the man said as he extended his hand to the Doctor.

 

“I'm the Doctor,” she replied as she gave his hand a hearty shake. “Good to meet you.”

 

“Oh you're a healer? I thought you might be something like that,” Jozsef said.

 

“Why's that,” Tally asked.

 

“I have a sense about such things,” he began to say. “I-”

 

“Father,” a young man about Yaz and Ryan's age walked over. He looked very much like his father, except that he was thinner, and his eyes were different. This youth had piercing green eyes, cold and sharp. “I'm sure these people don't want to be pestered by us.”

 

“We're not pestered,” Graham said.

 

“Even still. We should go father. There's a… foul scent in the air.” The man's eyes roamed over to the Doctor, who quirked up an eyebrow but otherwise did not respond.

 

“All right my son. Be at peace. Well… it was nice meeting you,” Jozsef told them.

 

“Likewise mate,” Ryan said.

 

“Bit odd…” Yaz mused as father and son wandered off.

 

“Uh huh.” Tally was already on her way to the bar to order their food.

 

The Doctor took a few steps forward to watch Jozsef and his son reclaim their seats at a table where a quiet woman with a haunting beauty was seated. She looked up and met the Doctor's eyes, just for a moment, but it was enough to make the Doctor avert her gaze and step back. “Doctor,” she heard Ryan say. “Was he talking about you?”

 

“I should hope not. I think I smell quite lovely.”

 

Graham chuckled. “Of course you do Doc.” 

 

The Doctor could feel something trying to come forward from the back of her mind, an old memory locked up tight for safekeeping rattling the bars of its cage. For a moment the air smelled like acetylene. “Afraid of your own newness. We see deeper, though, further back. The Timeless Child.” The Doctor gasped and took another step back.

 

“Doctor!” Yaz put her hand on the Doctor's arm and stepped closer to her. “What is it?”

 

“I just…” The Doctor turned to meet Yaz's frantic frightened eyes. “I'm fine, I'm fine.”

 

“Are you sure Doctor,” Ryan asked.

 

“I was just…” There is was again. The noise died down. The lights went out. She was in a messy junkyard. The old memory broke free and she felt like she might die of the pain.

 

“Well, I made up the name TARDIS from the initials, Time And Relative Dimension In Space. I thought you'd both understand when you saw the different dimensions inside from those outside,” said the child, the unearthly timeless child. Yet her time was ended.

 

“Doc?” She blinked and looked at Graham.

 

“She was a day tripper,” Lennon and McCartney sang. “One way ticket, yeah.”

 

“Doctor,” Ryan said.

 

She was in the pub. There was no junkyard, and Susan was nowhere to be found. It was stifling hot, but not in an unnatural way. Forks clanked against plates. People dragged their chairs against the dirty floorboards and had animated conversations. There was an abundance of light coming in through the clean windows. Someone started singing a dirty song about the West German team and others joined in with happy laughter.

 

“Okay, check it out,” Tally said as she returned to their group without seeming to notice the general air of concern. “Fish and chips of course, but I also got Welsh rarebit with bacon on top, steak and mushroom pie, smoked chicken, deviled beef bones, lamb chops and smoked haddock,” she exclaimed.

 

“There's no way to eat all that,” Yaz said.

 

“How did you pay for it,” Graham asked.

 

“Uncle Jack showed me how to make Time Agency bills once. When you imply a value the cashier will usually see that. I even got change in case we need to buy something later, because you should never use more than one per trip. Uncle Jack says that could pollute the time stream.”

 

“You didn't think to maybe order a salad to go with all of that,” Yaz asked. “That's pure fat.”

 

“There's mushrooms in some of this.”

 

Ryan started sniggering. “Dibs on the lamb.”

 

“I could go for some rarebit,” Graham said.

 

“It's just cheese, melted cheese on top of a little bit of bread,” Yaz protested.

 

The Doctor found herself grinning from ear to ear as she watched her small patchwork family bicker about food. Once she had possessed all of this. These mundane rituals had been her life. That had all been swept away long ago, but she was in 1966, and she could still feel the echoes of what had transpired three years and a dozen lifetimes ago in the air all around her. She watched her small little family laughing. She felt the heat of the bodies packed around them, pressing.

 

“I had hoped you lot might have gotten us a table while I bought the food,” Tally said.

 

“Take ours.” The haunting woman rose from her table and turned sad brown eyes onto the Doctor. Jozsef and his son, who were still sitting with her, looked at one another in confusion. “We're on our way out,” she said.

 

“You don't have to-” Graham started to say.

 

“We're late,” the woman said. “The sun will go down soon. We should be indoors.”

 

“It's the middle of the day,” Ryan said.

 

“You are indoors,” Yaz added.

 

“And do have a lovely day,” the woman said as she began to depart and her companions scrambled to follow her. The Doctor watched the trio leave, gears turning behind her eyes.

 

“Doctor,” Yaz asked.

 

The Doctor shoved her psychic paper into Ryan's hands. “Enjoy the game. I'll meet you back at the TARDIS later.”

 

“But Doctor-!” She heard Yaz calling after her.

 

She couldn't turn around to address her friends without losing sight of the woman and her companions. She dodged between crowds of people as she tried to stay close but not too close to the woman with the tragic eyes and strange beauty. She felt a hand grab her elbow and bring her to a sudden halt as the trio disappeared into the hustle and bustle of London. The Doctor scowled in disappointment as she turned to face the impediment to her success. Yaz was standing there, looking concerned. “Doctor please talk to me. What happened? Are you in trouble?”

 

The Doctor shook her head. “No, no I just…”

 

“Please tell me what's going on. I can't help you if I don't know,” Yaz told her.

 

“We should get back. The game-”

 

“I don't care about a stupid match. I care about you,” Yaz professed with agonizing sincerity. “Please, let me help you.”

 

“It felt so real.” On the street, which was free from the mass of bodies in the pub and enjoyed the occasional cool breeze, the Doctor thought she should have felt some degree of relief, but she didn't. The Doctor felt hot, boiling hot. She felt worse outside than she had inside. “She was right there.”

 

“Who was right there?”

 

“Susan!” The Doctor couldn't take the heat anymore and began to shrug off her coat.

 

“What are you doing? Who's Susan?”

 

“She's-! Nevermind,” The Doctor cut herself off as she dropped her coat on the ground and buried her face in her hands. “I could hear her! I could feel her right there!”

 

The Doctor felt Yaz's hand come to rest on her shoulder, so light it could almost have been a wisp of imagination. But the Doctor wasn't imagining Yaz. It was Susan that she had been imagining. Yaz was real. Yaz took a few hesitant steps forward and wrapped the Doctor in a hug. “I'm sorry Doctor.”

 

“Why is this happening to me,” the Doctor pleaded with her. “Why do these ghosts keep following me?” She broke the embrace.

 

“What do you need Doctor? How can I help?”

 

The Doctor draped her coat over her arm and dug into her pocket for her Sonic. “That woman at the pub, the one who was sitting with Jozsef, she had something to do with whatever happened, I'm sure of it.”

 

“And you want to follow her?”

 

The Doctor nodded. Now that the woman was gone her head felt clearer, and she was tempted to just forget the whole thing, turn around, rejoin her friends and go see the historic game. But she had heard Susan's voice, and even for a moment been standing right next to her. The Doctor couldn't disregard that. Even if this woman was dangerous the Doctor needed to find her and discover what, if any, connection she had to her granddaughter. “I have to,” she said.

 

“Then we should go get the others-”

 

“No,” the Doctor said. “I don't want Tallulah to be involved in this. I don't know for sure what's happening. I won't risk endangering her again. Besides,” The Doctor gave Yaz a shaky smile. “We don't want to ruin her birthday do we?” The Doctor pointed her Sonic at the crowd and then examined the various data. “Can we do this together, just you and me, no one else?” The Doctor looked at Yaz with pleading eyes.

 

Yaz hesitated. “Of course Doctor. Whatever you need,” Yaz assured her. “We should at least tell them where we're going, right?”

 

The Doctor shook her head. “We need to hurry if we want to pick up the trail. We can meet up with everybody else outside the stadium after the game ends.” The Doctor ran into the crowds, and after a moment heard the sound of Yaz's footsteps following.

 

The Doctor checked her Sonic again and picked up on a small but powerful radio signal radiating from somewhere in London. The Doctor couldn't yet pinpoint the exact location, but she was sure she would get better readings once she was closer. She kept running, confident that Yaz would follow her. There was no way to be sure that a strange radio signal was at all connected with the odd trio from the pub, but experience had taught the Doctor that if she pulled enough threads and prodded enough bulls sooner or later answers tended to reveal themselves in the ensuing chaos. So she kept running, and she tried to ignore the power of the sun beating down in her. She tried to shake the feeling that even though she knew the sun wouldn't destroy the Earth until another billions of years had passed, even though she could be certain because she had been there, it felt to her as though that event were happening in the present, and she was going to burn.


	3. Part Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to a certain reader who knows who she is for motivating me to actually finish this chapter instead of starting yet another WIP.

Ryan watched Yaz race after the Doctor and turned to his grandfather in alarm. “What should we do?” Ryan held an awkward position of half-seated and half-standing, ready to bolt after his friends.

 

“I guess we should follow them,” Graham said with a despondent look at the array of food Tally was already digging into.

 

“Why,” Tally asked with a mouthful of haddock so it came out sounding more like the sound a distressed cat makes.

 

“They might be in trouble,” Ryan said.

 

Tally swallowed a large bite of cheesy pork-topped bread. “The Doctor is always in trouble, and she's always fine. She'll discover some weird alien menace, defeat it, and then come back with a neat story. Meanwhile, it's my birthday and I want to see us make the West German team look like a bunch of dumb babies.” She punctuated her point by spearing a large chunk of chicken.

 

Graham looked out the window. “They're already out of sight anyway,” he said.

 

Ryan gave his grandfather a suspicious appraisal. “You just want to eat.”

 

“I'm hungry!” Graham pulled the lamb closer to himself. “Besides it is Tallulah's birthday and the Doctor told us to enjoy the game.”

 

Tallulah held up a fist, which Graham bumped with a bit too much glee for Ryan. “What if Yaz or the Doctor get hurt? They might need our help.” Ryan gave his grandfather a disapproving look as Graham nodded along with Ryan's words while also eating lamb.

 

“Which is precisely why we should finish eating and go to the game,” Tallulah said.

 

Ryan tried to puzzle out her logic while she kept eating. “What do you mean?”

 

“We have no idea where Yaz or the Doctor went, and if we go looking for them they won't know where we are if they need to come find us either. But if we go to the game they'll know our exact location and be able to retrieve us should they need our help.”

 

“That's a very self-serving argument,” Ryan pointed out. “And what if they need our help and can't get away from whatever they need help with to come get us?” Ryan folded his arms over his chest and gave Tally what he hoped passed for a stern look.

 

Tally pointed at Ryan with a bone. “Do you know what your problem is Ryan Sinclair?”

 

Graham looked up. “When did anybody tell you his last name?” Ryan thought that a good question as well, but at the moment was more invested in the argument at hand.

 

“What's my problem?”

 

“You are a pessimist.” She punctuated every other word with the rib bone of a poor deceased cow. “When you think negative thoughts you create negative energy. You will misfortune into being. Once you become convinced a certain outcome is inevitable the universe takes its cues from you. I think positive thoughts. I believe Yaz and the Doctor are going to be fine. By believing that I'm sending them positive energy. YOU are sending them negative energy. Which means right now I'm doing a lot more to help them than you are.” Tally gave Ryan a smug grin.

 

“You don't actually believe that new age stuff do you,” Ryan asked Tallulah. He looked to his grandfather for support, certain the older man would scoff at Tally's claims.

 

“She might be onto something son.” Graham shocked Ryan with his response. “When I was in the cancer ward your Nan told me the patients who believed they would recover always fared better than the patients who had given up. Positive thoughts can have an effect on things. I don't think you can believe your way to a happy ending, but it can tip the scales for sure.” Tallulah put out her fist again and Graham beamed as he bumped it.

 

Ryan groaned, but he conceded defeat and dropped into his seat. “Fine, you win.”

 

“It's not a competition Ryan. Not everything in life has to be about conflict,” Graham teased.

 

“Except for the game,” Tally said. “That is going to be very competitive, and we are going to win because we're the best!”

 

“Shhhh,” Graham cautioned. “You can't go around predicting the future. What if someone hears you?”

 

Ryan rolled his eyes. He raised his voice to be heard throughout the pub. “Oi mates! Who's going to win this match then?!”

 

“England!”

 

“We are!”

 

“Those commie bastards are going down!”

 

“You're thinking of East Germany,” Tally attempted to shout over the noise, but no one paid her any mind. Ryan chuckled at her annoyed expression. The crowds began to shout obscenities about the West German team, and Tallulah shrugged before returning her attention to her food.

 

“Alright, good point,” Graham conceded.

 

Ryan smiled at his grandfather. They finished their meal, somehow consuming what had been too much food for five people between just the three of them. Graham told Tallulah and Ryan about the bands that came over the radio. Tallulah enthused about sports strategies and how the game had changed over the years. Ryan found great joy in debating them both as to what constituted good music or good athleticism. He felt like he was part of a real family outing, the sort his father had never taken him on. Ryan just wished his Nan was with them. He grinned at Tallulah as she used passionate gesticulation to get her point about referees across.

 

“What,” she asked when she noticed his look.

 

“I was just thinking about how much my Nan would have liked you,” Ryan explained.

 

Graham's smile turned bittersweet. “Yeah she would have done,” he agreed. “She would have claimed you as a second grandchild.”

 

Tallulah gave Graham a sympathetic look and reached out to squeeze his hand. “It wasn't long ago that you lost Grace, was it?”

 

Alarm bells went off in Ryan's head. “Hang on a minute. I know we never told you my Nan's name. How did you know it,” he demanded.

 

Tallulah reclaimed her hand and shrugged in an attempt at a causal aspect. Ryan wasn't fooled. “One of you told me,” she said.

 

“No we didn't,” Graham agreed with Ryan.

 

Tallulah sighed with exasperation. “Come on guys, you've been time traveling for long enough to get a handle on these sorts of things, haven't you? You will tell me in your future, which intersects with my past.”

 

“But that doesn't make sense,” Ryan argued with her. “Why would we be going to your past in our future? The whole point of hopping ahead was to not endanger a little kid, so why would we go back?” Ryan had trouble believing Graham would ever agree to go back and pick up a young Tallulah, even if the Doctor was inclined to do so. Yet Tally insisted they were both in her past.

 

Tally pushed her empty dishes away and got to her feet. She inspected her jacket for stray bits of food, which had the convenient effect of hiding her eyes. “Don't overthink it Ryan.”

 

“But-”

 

“You two ready for the game?” She looked up and flashed a huge grin before clapping her hands together. “My dad's going to be so jealous of us. We should get him a souvenir.”

 

“Tally-” Graham started to say. Ryan knew that Tally wouldn't answer Graham either, and that a prolonged interrogation wasn't going to produce much intel for them. All their questions were likely to do was ruin Tally's birthday gift, which he reminded himself had been the whole point of the excursion in the first place. So Ryan cut his grandfather off.

 

“Good idea. Let's get going.”

 

Graham looked at Ryan. He must have seen Ryan's thoughts on his face and agreed with them, because Graham nodded and didn't voice another word of protest. “Will be standing room only,” he said. “Let's try not to lose each other. The Doctor would be livid.”

 

The three of them exited the pub into the warm weather. Ryan side-eyed Tally's jacket as they strolled down the street. “Aren't you boiling in that thing,” he asked. “Black leather in July?” For his own part Ryan found the heat just straddling the line between pleasant and stifling. He appreciated the occasional breezes that found them.

 

“When you're cool enough to pull off this look you're socially obligated to do so,” she said.

 

Graham guffawed at that response. “Oh to have the confidence of a teenager again.”

 

“I never sounded like that,” Ryan protested.

 

Graham smiled and shook his head in lieu of responding. Ryan experienced a moment of nervousness when the trio arrived at the stadium, but he adopted an air of confidence as he displayed the Doctor's psychic paper and they were waved inside without so much as a second glance. The stadium was packed to bursting and full of smoke. Tally coughed and then hid her face in her jacket to take a deep breath. “Is smoking in public places not illegal yet,” she asked. “I can't breathe.”

 

Ryan and Graham shared a look of alarm as Tally- fell. The cold night air filled his lungs as Ryan saw her slip. She fell and fell and- waved her hands in front of her face. “Should we leave,” Graham was asking her. Ryan stared at the crowd of jostling bodies. A bloke shoulder checked another man and caused him to spill his beer, instigating an unnecessary confrontation. It was neither night nor cold. “Do you have Asthma?”

 

“No,” Tally said. “I'm just used to fresher air ever since we ratified the global clean air initiative a few years back. I'll be fine.”

 

“Nice to know my generation didn't completely cock things up for you youngsters,” Graham said.

 

“Don't worry, you gave it your best. But we organized protests all over the world and in the end only two countries refused to sign.”

 

“Which two,” Ryan asked. He was still unsteady after his strange experience, but he was determined to give no sign of it.

 

“Eh, eh, eh! Spoilers! You know what the Doctor always says,” Graham lectured.

 

“Was America one of them,” Ryan asked more to annoy Graham than out of any genuine curiosity. He refused to let himself ponder the vivid nature of his flashback.

 

“Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies.”

 

“Good girl,” Graham said. “Let's try to get closer to the field. Maybe the air quality will improve.” Graham put an arm around both of them as they navigated the crowd. Ryan was a touch annoyed by the gesture, but at the same time he liked knowing that someone was worried enough about him to be overprotective. They found a good place to stand with a clear view of the action and without too many neighbors chanting about the lineage of the opposing team. Ryan felt his tension and uncertainty wash away as the swell of anticipation washed over him.

 

“There's almost a hundred thousand people in this stadium,” Tally shouted over the background noise of the crowd.

 

“Health and safety ought to be throwing a fit!”

 

Ryan chuckled at his grandfather and bumped him with his shoulder. “Oi was the Queen here? Think we can catch a glimpse of her?” Ryan craned his neck to see.

 

“Don't see Lizzy, but look!” Tally pointed a fair ways off and Ryan shielded his eyes to see what she was gesturing towards. It took Ryan a minute to realize he was looking at the rude man from the pub, the one with the cheerful father and strange female companion.

 

“What's he doing,” Graham asked.

 

Ryan squinted. The man was handing over a stack of bills to another fellow. Ryan couldn't make out the denomination, but there were several bills in the stack. “Paying someone.”

 

“Oh he's gambling! That's an idea! We could do that with my change from the pub! We'd be drowning in lager and-” Ryan and Graham both shot Tally disapproving looks. “And that would be wrong, very, very wrong,” she said.

 

Ryan rolled his eyes. He forgot all about the rude patron from the pub and focused on the field as the players came out. He felt excitement rising up in him. All thoughts of distress or fear were gone. It was a beautiful day, and the day's happy ending was a foregone conclusion, historical fact. He let himself be swept away by the enthusiasm of the crowd. For a moment he felt like a part of a larger whole. He wasn't one man, but a member of a team. He whooped and cheered and refused to worry. All was well.


End file.
